The Eco Cycle: Underground Bike Storage & Sharing System

June 18, 2013

Parking your bike in the city can be a bit of a drag, especially when bike racks and space is limited. Even if you’re lucky enough to find street parking for your bike, you need to be careful because there may be a chance that it won’t be there when you get back. In Vancouver alone, an average of 5 or 6 bikes are stolen everyday. 9 bikes are stolen each day in Vancouver in the summer months. Japan came up with a very clever solution for this. It’s called the The Eco Cycle. An engineering company called Giken Ltd. has developed an anti-seismic, user-friendly, and automated underground bike share and parking system. This system can store more than 200 bikes in an area that would otherwise just fit 20-30 bikes. Parking our bikes underground would reduce the risk of theft and clear the above ground area for emergency access.

Now considering the recent expansion of bike share programs across North America, one of their biggest downsides is the limited space that most bike share infrastructures take up. Giken Ltd.’s underground storage system would help solve this problem.

Once a bike is returned to the The Eco Cycle system, it would be robotically scanned for damage and then be repaired accordingly. In addition, this system could have feature that would be able to learn the height of the seat and handle bar position of each user, and adjust it accordingly next time they borrow a bike. Another great feature that this system would have is an automatic bike wash, where bikes would be washed routinely underground.